Saint Joseph Catholic Church

The apostolic nuncio to Ukraine asked for prayer and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine amid intensifying Russian missile and drone attacks far from the front line.

“I would like to encourage everyone to support Ukraine, above all in a spiritual sense,” Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas said in an interview with Vatican News. “This means prayer, humanitarian assistance, solidarity, and heartfelt closeness.”

Archbishop Kulbokas added, “I believe that the greatest help the Church can offer the Ukrainian people is above all spiritual help: to assist everyone—including myself—to broaden our gaze, so as not to focus solely on the evil we see and experience every day, but to maintain a gaze filled with hope.”

In an editorial marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a Vatican spokesman lamented the suffering of the Ukrainian people, warned against indifference to their plight, and called for peace.

At the same time, Massimiliano Menichetti, one of three vice directors of Dicastery for Communication’s editorial department, warned against rearmament in response to Russian aggression.

“We will need a way of seeing that does not humiliate the enemy, that can turn the enemy into a counterpart at the table—an approach capable of changing hearts,” Menichetti wrote on February 24. “We must hope that this fourth anniversary will mark the year in which the international community stops ‘managing’ the war and returns to building peace, nurturing trust, coexistence, and shared memory.”

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Today is Ember Wednesday, the beginning of the Spring or Lent Embertide. There are two principal objects for the Ember Days of this period of the year: the first is to offer to God the season of Spring, and, by fasting and prayer, to draw down His blessing upon it; the second is to ask Him to enrich with His choicest graces the priests and sacred ministers who are to receive their Ordination on Saturday. See also Contemporary Observation of Ember Days and Lenten Ember Days for more information.

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